Twitter

Marketers We're Following

Didn’t make it to Advertising Week? Well, even if you did, there’s no way you were able to attend all of the great sessions taking place all over Manhattan. Relax! We searched the Web for coverage of the week-long event to bring you the best commentary about many of the industry’s hottest topics.

• On advertising automation:“The reality is that automation is taking a lot of the cost out of advertising,” said Keith Eadie, VP of Adobe Advertising Cloud. “It’s allowing brands to repurpose the resources and focus on higher value things.” (Source: Adobe Think Tank)

• On the marketer’s biggest challenge:
“One of the biggest challenges we see [is that a lot of] marketers don’t even know who they’re talking to,” said Neil O’Keefe, the Data & Marketing Association’s SVP of marketing and content. They don’t understand the identity of their customer. We’ve gotten really good over the last 10 years of learning how to talk to devices. So we’re talking to laptops, and we’re talking to phones and tablets, but we’ve lost the connection with the customer. And data’s going to solve that.”

On the companies to set your sights on: “Google, Facebook, and Amazon, along with two Chinese companies—Tencent and Alibaba—are the ones we need to watch out for,” said WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell during a discussion with New Yorker writer Ken Auletta on Sept. 25. (Source: Digiday)

• On context in advertising:“We all need to think as advertisers a little more about where people are when we advertise to them,” said Unilever chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed. (Source: Advertising Age)

On branded content:
“We like to say that branded content is only branded if it sucks,” said Maya Draisin Farrah, VP of marketing, collection, at Conde Nast. “In reality, if you’re telling a good story, the consumer these days doesn’t care if it comes from a brand or it comes from a traditional publisher.”

• On the future of agencies:“The agencies that are in this room today, I think they’ll be lucky to be around in five years, much less 10, unless they radically transform the way they go to market and the things they do to serve clients,” said Andrew Bailey, North America CEO and partner at The & Partnership, during a panel discussion. (Source: Advertising Age)

• On marketing to Gen Z:“If you pay attention and you listen, or even ask them, for sure they will tell you what they want to hear, what they want to see, what they like, and what they don’t like,” Mimi Banks, founder of MB Social, told Ad Week attendees. (Source: Advertising Week)

On differentiating: “Today, [advertisers] are focused a lot on the vanity metrics, like views, impressions, and clicks. But we need to figure out how far down the funnel these things are taking people,” said Jill Cress, CMO of National Geographic. “We feel like we are at a moment where we will see an ambition and a shift to emotional connection and the psychology of the consumer. That’s how brands will differentiate.” (Source: Adobe Think Tank)

• On providing superb customer experiences:
“The digital aspects of our business are constantly changing,and we are constantly looking for the next ways we can bring that to life,” said Loren Angelo, VP of marketing at Audi.

Twitter

Marketers We're Following

Giselle Abramovich has 10-plus years of experience covering and analyzing marketing, media, and commerce. Before joining CMO.com by Adobe, she wrote and edited for publications such as Digiday, DM News, Mobile Marketer, Mobile Commerce Daily, and Luxury Daily. Follow her on Twitter.